


Forming the Team

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Series: Fandom Writing Challenge [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse Rising, Blood Drinking, Gen, Minor Character Death, Team Building, That Stupid Voicemail, s4 alternate ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 01:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10264430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: Drinking Cindy - he couldn't forget she was human, not the way she was crying and begging him to stop - felt wrong.  It was wrong, obviously, but he couldn't shake a nagging feeling that this was crossing a line.Sam pulls back and prays to Cas to... apologize?  Ask him to tell Dean he was sorry?  He didn't even know anymore.It doesn't stop the Apocalypse.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fandom Writing Challenge Round 2: Sports and Leisure
> 
> Prompt: Team

Her name is Cindy McClellan. She’s a nurse in NICU. She has a husband named Matthew. They’ve been married for six years.

She’s also tied up in the trunk of Ruby’s car.

She’s possessed by a demon. Lilith’s personal chef, who told them where to find Lilith. And then retreated. Sam needs the blood if he’s going to be strong enough to kill Lilith. He’s come so far, and he doesn’t have long. Dean’s message pushed him over the edge. He’d thought – hoped – it was a hallucination of Dean who said that he was done pretending Sam was his brother, but that message… “Blood sucking freak.” “I’m done trying to save you.” If he killed Lilith, he could try to make things right with Dean afterwards, but he’d lost Dean.

But even as he took his first drink, he couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness. Nothing felt right. Not having Ruby beside him, not drinking blood, although those weren’t new. The message felt wrong, though. Leaving his brother bloody on the floor had felt wrong. 

Sam pulled back. He couldn’t do this. He could hear Ruby asking him what he was doing, promising him that Cindy was dead already so he might as well drink before they killed the demon too. He could hear it. But he couldn’t believe it. He dropped to his knees, and pitched forward onto his hands. He threw up the blood he’d just swallowed. There was no way to get rid of the blood he’d taken from Ruby, but that was okay, he still needed that.

Once he recovered his balance, he stretched out a hand towards Cindy. He pulled the demon from within her, focusing everything he had on crushing its life out once it was out. He’d killed Alastair. He could kill this bitch. Unfortunately, Ruby hadn’t been lying – Cindy started coughing up blood.

“What are you doing, Sam?” Ruby came to squat beside him. “We’ve got to get to Lilith, and now we’ll have to capture another demon! That woman’s blood won’t do you any good, and I can’t give you enough, I told you that.”

“No. Something’s wrong here, Ruby.” Sam got to his feet, still shaky.

“Yeah, what’s wrong is that you’re blowing your chance! I don’t know how to find Lilith again!”

Sam didn’t answer. He just walked away. He pulled out his phone and listened to Dean’s message again. It still didn’t sound right. He wished he could talk to Dean. Clearly, that was impossible. But maybe – just maybe – he might be able to apologize through Castiel. It wasn’t likely. Castiel had little reason to do him any favors, and that was before Sam had killed someone. He probably wasn’t listening to prayers from the boy with the demon blood. But if the worst that could happen was that he irritated someone who already hated him…

There was a rush of wind, and then Sam blacked out.

 

“Sam. Wake up.” Sam blinked slowly and looked around as much as he could without giving away that he was awake now. He was in Bobby’s panic room. Not restrained, just lying on the cot. Cas’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him. “Wake up.”

Sam sat up. “I’m awake. What happened?”

“I don’t know what’s about to happen. I heard your prayer, which is good. It allowed me to find you, to get you here to sleep while I got Dean.” Sam looked around for Dean, but he wasn't down here. That wasn't a surprise. Dean probably wasn't even going to come say hello. “There may not be much time. Sam, you should be hidden here. Bobby and I have put up every warding we can think of. But if Lucifer rises, you’ll feel it. You’ll know.”

“I know where Lilith is. Castiel, we can still stop her. Or at least we can still try!” 

Cas shook his head. “Stopping her means killing her, which is the exact wrong thing to do. At least this way, she has to kill herself. Lilith is the last seal.”

“…Oh.”

Castiel tilted his head, examining Sam curiously. “Sam, why did you pray to me?”

“After the message, I was pretty sure Dean wouldn’t answer if I called… didn’t figure praying to do you would do much good either, but at least I wouldn’t know.”

“I see.”

Sam sighed. “Look, you and Uriel did a pretty good job killing my faith, but… I was lost. I was desperate. I killed a woman. I didn’t… Ruby wanted me to drink her so I’d be strong enough to kill Lilith, drain her completely, but I couldn’t go through with it. I needed somewhere to turn, and I know what you think of me, but you were all I could think of.”

“How did the woman die, if you didn’t drink her blood?”

“I pulled the demon out of her to kill, but she was too badly injured.”

Castiel sat very stiffly on the cot beside Sam. “I owe you an apology. All of Heaven does, but right now, I’m the only one willing to admit that. All of us, we underestimated you. I judged you because of the demon blood you were given, and I was wrong. I thought you would break, kill that woman, and kill Lilith. That you would play your role, the role you were cast in long before you were even born. I was wrong, Sam, and I am sorry.”

“I very nearly did.”

“But you didn’t. When it came down to it, you made the right choice.” Castiel stared intently at Sam. "I was right about you all along. You had enough strength and innate goodness to save yourself, even as deep as you got into the plan."

"But you thought I'd break."

"That's not the same as believing there was no hope. An odd thing for an angel to have, but I always had hope that you would stop." Castiel reached up, two fingers to Sam's temple, and warmth flooded through him. "It's not easy to break free of the will of Heaven. I admire you, Sam."

Sam was about to ask why they were hiding, but he bent over, as a wave of panic and despair hit him. Castiel reached out, steadying him with a hand to the chest. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Lucifer. Lilith did it. He’s here.”

Castiel put a hand to Sam's chest, and pain seared through him. “Listen very closely. Archangels require very powerful vessels. At any given time, there are usually no more than two or three people who can handle that power, because it’s passed down through a bloodline. One reason Lilith and Zachariah thought that now was the right time for the Apocalypse was that for the first time in a very long time, the bloodlines of Michael and Lucifer came back together so that the true vessels are brothers.”

“Me and Dean.”

“Exactly. Dean, the elder brother, the good son, is Michael’s true vessel. You, the younger brother, the family rebel, you’re Lucifer’s. Angels and demons both will be searching for you. But there is hope. They are angels, meaning they have to get consent to take you as a vessel. I've hidden you, and I'll do the same for Dean, but they can find you in dreams. They’ll try to wear you down. We can’t let them succeed.”

“How do we stop the Apocalypse?”

Cas shrugged. “Kill one or both archangels, or find a way to force Lucifer back into his cage. It won’t be easy. Right now, the only idea I have is searching for God.”

“Good luck.” Sam shoved his hands into his pocket. “How is Dean? Is he somewhere safe?”

“He’s upstairs. He wants to talk to you.”

Sam huffed. “I doubt that. Last I heard, he wanted to kill me.”

“Kill you? No. He’s still pissed, but he knows the two of you need each other. If there’s any hope of surviving this, the two of you must find a way to forgive each other for the past year.”

“What’s to forgive Dean for? He was right all along, Ruby was leading me astray. Whether she knew that or not, I don’t know, but Dean was right.”

“Dean spent the entire year pushing you away. That was partly my fault, Heaven’s fault, but Dean still needs forgiveness for it. Did you listen to his voicemail?”

“The one where he called me a freak and told me he’d kill me if he ever saw me again? That one?”

“No… what are you talking about?”

Sam pulled out his phone and played the message. “So I get why I’m locked in here, I do.”

Cas frowned at the phone. “That’s not what Dean said. I was there, listening.” He reached out and took the phone. “May I take this to play for Dean? He should know what you heard.” Sam nodded, and Castiel turned to go. He stopped and looked back. "You're not locked in here. You're free to come and go as you like now that we know Lucifer wasn't drawn straight to you."

Cas may say that, but Sam wouldn't believe it until he'd heard it from Dean, too. He laid back on the cot. He wasn’t expecting much from Cas’s conversation with Dean. If he was lucky, Cas would drop by every now and then to let him know how things were going. Bobby would talk to him, maybe even let him help with research. Sam wouldn’t blame them for locking him up. He’d certainly shown that he couldn’t be trusted until he was detoxed. Oddly enough, he wasn’t feeling anything right now. He couldn't feel the power from having the blood, or the jitters from needing more. It didn't make much sense.

When the door open, Sam got to his feet, facing it. He gasped in surprise when Dean came in. “Sam. Glad you’re okay.”

“You too. Did Cas fix you up?”

“Yeah. Listen. About what I said…” Dean paused, and Sam looked down. He did not want to do this. “I shouldn’t have. That’s what I said when I called you. Cas played what you heard instead, but Sam, I need you to believe that wasn’t me. We’re still family, still brothers. That still means something.”

Sam swallowed a couple times, trying to hold back the tears. “Thanks. I shouldn’t have… done a lot of what I’ve done, the past year. You were right about the blood, you were probably right about Ruby, and I made the wrong choice in that hotel room.”

“But you made the right one before it was too late.” Sam looked up. Dean looked like he was still pissed, but there wasn’t any of the horror or loathing from when Dean had seen him sucking blood, or when they fought and Sam walked away from him. “Look. I’m pissed. I’m gonna be pissed for a long time. But Cas had a good point, so I’m gonna do everything I can to get over it.”

“What did Cas say?”

“Cas said that right now, we’re up against two goddamn archangels who want to turn Earth into the octagon, with all the forces of Heaven and Hell behind them. We basically have no chance here. But if we’re gonna try for that snowball in Hell, our odds get a lot better if we do it together. We’re a team. You, me, Cas, Bobby, anyone else we can think of who’d believe us and be willing to join a hopeless cause, we’re a team. Team Free Will.”

Sam chuckled. “Yeah. Sounds good. Team Free Will.” He turned to Cas. “You’re joining us?”

“I can’t fight for Heaven, not this time. I’m with Team Free Will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this has nothing to do with sports and leisure, but you can't prompt "team" for Supernatural without making me think of Team Free Will!
> 
> Comments are cookies for writers, but without the guilt of eating unhealthily!


End file.
